Google Desktop has been updated several times during the past few weeks of November 2006. In case you have forgotten, Google Desktop is a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, web pages that you’ve viewed, and more. It doesn’t just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web Sidebar and Google Gadgets, which can be placed anywhere on your desktop to show you new email, weather, stock information, photos, personalized news, RSS/Atom feeds, and more.
Here, we will be posting them within one post. Here are the new Google Desktop gadgets:
- NPR Now Playing – Are you a fan of NPR? Well, they’ve created a new gadget for you. You can keep the NPR Now Playing gadget in your Sidebar or on your desktop for easy access to NPR programming. You’ll never be far from your favorite programs and you can start listening with just a push of the button.
- Moon Phase – Google Desktop now has a gadget about phases of the moon. This latest gadget tells you where we are, lunar-phase-wise, on your desktop. Simply place this virtual moon anywhere you want and hover your mouse over it to get more details.
- Wikipedia Search – With this new gadget, whenever there’s a topic you want to explore or just something you don’t know about, theWikipedia search gadget lets you quickly search Wikipedia. It also shows results and suggestions while you type, and saves your recent searches for easy access.
- The Google Desktop Sidebar has been updated to Google Desktop 4.5, featuring a Sidebar with a new look. The new Sidebar look is now transparent, so it fits seamlessly with your desktop environment. Gadgets that fought for attention now look right at home, and content-heavy gadgets get new frames and icons that make it easier to tell them apart.
Furthermore, if you want to customize your Sidebar, there are several ways to do it. From the Sidebar options menu, you can turn off the “Always on Top” feature to allow it to go to the background (easily bring it to the front by pressing shift twice). Or select the “Auto-hide” feature from the same menu to hide the Sidebar off the screen when your mouse isn’t near it. And just drag the edge of the Sidebar to adjust the width.
Here is our previous post on Google Desktop. To find out more about Google Gadget, please click HERE!
